Art Retrospective: Songs of Leonard Cohen 1967

In our new column, Art Retrospective, writers get the chance to reflect on one of their personal favourite pieces of art, and discuss why it is still relevant to university students today.

Leonard Cohen died on November 7, 2016. He was 82. Born in Montreal’s Westmount neighbourhood in 1934, Leonard Cohen spent his life songwriting and singing. He published poetry in the 1960s and had a run of critically acclaimed albums from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. In the years before his death, Cohen entered yet another critically acclaimed creative period. 10 years after his death, his work is more beloved and relevant than ever. Cohen’s music has officially found its newest audience: hip Gen Z music fanatics. In 2023, Leonard Cohen was heavily referenced in two of the hippest and most celebrated albums of that year, Boygenius’s The Record and Lana Del Rey‘s masterpiece Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard. Recently, Cohen has been cited as an influence by Gen Z critical darlings like Cameron Winter and Olivia Rodrigo. 

Go on music Twitter, and you’ll find young people discussing Cohen‘s work with both humour and admiration. Go on Instagram, and you’ll find young people making $40, fashionable Leonard Cohen t-shirts. Go to Cohen’s beautiful resting place in Montreal, and you’ll notice a steady stream of young artsy types in thrifted band t-shirts filing past his grave to pay their respects. Cohen is officially part of the cool-kid zeitgeist. He is a marker of taste and a niche, intellectual, hipster sex symbol. 

Even from the grave, Cohen is far from finished inspiring generation after generation of artists. Gen Z will not be the last. 

There are traditional Cohen-Heads out there that could give you an entire run-down of Cohen’s early literary career and subsequent foray into the music business. I’ll skip that and get right to the crux of the matter: Songs of Leonard Cohen is the perfect entry point into Cohen’s catalogue for musically-inclined, curious young people who have a taste for some truly generational CanCon. However, don’t listen to this album because it’s a classic, 20th-century masterpiece. Listen to this album rather because it will give you the intangible thing that only the best music can give you. Intellectual stimulation, emotional release, aesthetic excitement, take your pick.

Songs of Leonard Cohen is a mysterious, sly, funny, lonely, but single-minded album. Its songwriting is detailed but ambiguous. Songs of Leonard Cohen is at one moment light, wistful, loving and in the next moment isolated, sexually depraved, and macabre. It can be categorized as a late 1960s singer-songwriter classic, but it also stands alone due to how good it is. 

The quality, complexity, and uniqueness of the writing on this album can be explained by the fact that Cohen was already a seasoned writer by 1967. He’d published both poetry and fiction and was a star in the 1960s Montreal art scene. But Cohen had always loved music, and in 1966 he decided to pursue songwriting. 

This album is definitely of its time, with its promiscuous yearnings, but Cohen doesn’t preach about free love or sexual liberation on this album. It’s no romp! This isn’t sunny San Francisco, so don’t expect any Byrds or Beach Boys harmonies. This is freezing cold, desolate, but sophisticated Montreal, so expect some real nastiness. 

University of Alberta students will be thrilled by Songs of Leonard Cohen’s connection to Edmonton, and to the U of A itself. Cohen was kicked out of the Hotel MacDonald in 1966 after doing a concert in the Tory Building. After being ejected from the hotel due to his obsessive fans, Cohen found himself with nowhere to go. He ended up staying with two young women who were undergraduate students at the university. In the middle of the night, Cohen got up and wrote “Sisters of Mercy” for these two women. 

“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” is light but plaintive. “Master Song” is violent and unsettling. “One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong“, which ends the album, is absolute and devastating. All in all, “Songs of Leonard Cohen“ is a musical experience I would recommend to anyone and everyone who will make time for it. This album is a door that once opened, can take you to some far-out, scary, but beautiful places. It’s worth the trip.